Bloomberg Over a fifth of the UK’s listed companies issued a profit warning in the first quarter of 2020, compared with 17% in the full year of 2008, according to a report by consultants EY. The economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed up the number of profit warnings in the UK, with 301 issued in the quarter ...

Bloomberg Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund has been bulking up on stocks that got hammered during March’s historic market decline, adding to stakes in companies such as Carnival Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The fund has acquired holdings of 5% or more in seven US-traded companies since mid-March, according to filings by Oslo-based Norges Bank. The list includes ...

Bloomberg Canada’s newspapers are asking the federal government to follow France and Australia in forcing companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook, Inc. to pay to display their news content. “Both France and Australia have set deadlines to have mandatory solutions in place by July. That means paying for copyrighted content and sharing the advertising dollars and data that ...

Bloomberg PG&E Corp. said it would replace most of its board as part of a broad overhaul of its governance structure as the California power giant pushes to exit bankruptcy. PG&E said only three of the 14 current directors will remain after the company exits Chapter 11 by mid-year, according to a statement. The utility’s chair, Nora Mead Brownell, will ...

Bloomberg Zero-percent financing deals hit a record last month as carmakers kept the US auto market from collapsing. More than one in every four new vehicles sold in April did so with 0% loans, according to market researcher Edmunds. By opening up the lending spigots, the US avoided a reprise of the almost 80% drop automakers experienced in China in ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. (BofA) is starting to see consumer spending edge higher after plunging with the start of the coronavirus lockdown. The nascent increase, which follows a 30% drop, is showing up as consumers buy more groceries, restaurant meals, clothing and gasoline, Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in an interview on CNBC. US aggregate spending averaged about ...

Bloomberg Calogero Lo Vetro couldn’t wait to get back to work, describing the scene he saw on his return as “something from a sci-fi movie,” with health monitors decked out like space men checking staff at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s Mirafiori plant during its preliminary reopening. Lo Vetro, a quality-control officer at the Turin area factory whose models include Fiat’s ...

Bloomberg North Korean troops fired at their South Korean counterparts on Sunday in the demilitarised zone that divides the two countries, a move that comes as its leader Kim Jong-un reappeared in public following an unexplained three-week absence. North Korea fired “several times” at a South Korean military guard post at about 7:41 am, and was met with retaliatory shots ...

Bloomberg Afghan Taliban insurgents killed 17 civilians and wounded 49 during the first week of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, further chipping away at their pledge to reduce violence following a peace deal with the US. The fatalities occurred from April 24, Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the National Security Council of Afghanistan, said on Twitter. Most of the ...

Bloomberg China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong accused protesters of jeopardizing the future of the city, calling demonstrations “illegal activities,” in the latest signal that China’s top agency in the semi-autonomous territory intends to take a more hands-on role. In a statement published on its website, the Liaison Office said “extremist radicals” were involved in illegal gatherings, harassment of shops ...